Open Wide

Here you go kids, my first music video. It will premier on MTV's LOGO this month. It is currently on Spike Tv's website, was breifly up on CMT and VH-1's websites but pulled temporarily due to some technical issues.

Enjoy!

Untitled

Photo by Carrie Thomas

I went into the studio on Saturday and did some backing vocals and additional guitars for Throw That Box as well as some drumming.

Fall has begun to creep into my bones. I cling to K at night as the cold air crawls through the window by our bed like an intruder. He is a very functional furnace.

Next weekend is the Coney Island Film Festival.(Thank You Anonymous)

I feel a little sad today. I'm not sure why.

My phone is ringing. I'm pretending I don't hear it.

The air is heavy.

This day is long.

I think I may buy some yarn and start making a scarf.

I've been stockpiling canned goods.
I used 2 cans of beans.
This stresses me out.
It's a constant task to keep things
as they should be.
I want to be prepared when the bombs start to fall.

I feel like that lady who was screaming
and handing out pamphlets in the subway about
9-11 and the government plot behind it.
She actually sounded pretty sane to me,
though she should have printed her rantings in a larger font.
8 point is hard to read, especially as the train is shifting.

They really should modernize the subway. It's falling apart.
Laura killed a cockroach in my bathroom. Soon, there will be more. She made muffins for my cracked out neighbor who now refers to me as "The Boss Man."

The water has started leaking again. It sounds like it is raining inside the wall.
I have wavering opinions about the man upstairs and his plot to drive me crazy. Of course, I kid.

More on the Festival of Coney, Film that is.

As mentioned previously, my first music video is an official selection of the 2007 Coney Island Film Festival. The schedule has just been posted.

It will be showing Sunday, Sept. 30th, closing out a series of shorts that start at 1pm. at
THE CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM
1208 Surf Ave.
(more info)

Open Wide::Coney Island Film Festival

It is my pleasure to announce that the music video for Open Wide has been chosen as an official selection of The Coney Island Film Festival.

Thank you to Rob Martin, everyone at Bizarre F.A.R.M., The Gender Offenders, Brian Maschka, Marc Carpentier, Kim Levering, Carrie Thomas, and Laura Oltman.


The festival is September 28th-30th.
More details to come..

Don't take it away

Nathan's in Coney Island

Photo by Carrie Thomas

I was choking down my chilidog and watching the "circus folk" walk by, wondering if this is really the end? Will the cotton candy blow away in the winds of change, leaving behind a strip mall and a rollercoaster, which will eventually be too noisy for high rise luxury condos and later be turned into a coney island museum to show what the place used to be like?

I spent most of my Easter in Coney Island, wondering if the pealing faded paint and broken boardwalk would rise up like Jesus for the day. Everyone would see the freaks dancing in all their glory and children shooting at them with paint guns. Oh wait, am I supposed to be drawing out the parts of Coney Island that you should want to save? There isn't a part of it as strange as it may be that looks like a head for any chopping block in my book.

Coney Island in its glorious faded beauty reminds me that there used to be vaudeville, that men wore large one-piece bathing suits, and that a nickel and a bearded lady could both go a long way if you found the right place to use them.

We spit on the past instead of honoring it. We wheel the old people and the old things away to places where we don't have to see their decay. We stop sanding the wood every year and repainting the sign because the cracks in the wood and the color that has faded from the paint are like our lives. We don't like to be reminded that life is beautiful but fleeting. We'd prefer to put something new in the place of the old.... a new building...a new boyfriend...a new nose from your fifth husband and his fifth avenue surgeon.

It made my heart sink to see that the batting cages are gone and replaced by a construction site. Gone is the go-cart racetrack.
Soon, I will only have pictures and memories. I will be one of those old crotchity men telling anyone who will listen what the good old days were really like. I shoveled snow uphill 10 miles to get a corndog from the amazing snake boy and it cost a nickel and it took me 12 days of hard labor to earn that nickel, and I never complained, not once. Don't forget it.

I urge you to visit Coney Island before it is all gone and do everything in your power to protest its destruction. I chose to shoot part of my music video on the island of coney. I can't think of a better place to wear my straight jacket proudly and give a shout out to a place that is full of so much history and part of my home, my heart, my Brooklyn.

Coney Island, I love you. I wish I could save you. It really hurts me to the point of crying to think of losing you. If that is what it comes to, then I will carry you in my heart for as long as I live.

Brooklyn Musician Arrested After Chaining Himself To A Giant Fiberglass Bee in a Desperate Attempt to Save Coney Island

Photo by Carrie Thomas

Brooklyn Singer/Songwriter, Robert German was arrested late last Friday evening after a standoff with local authorities. German, a 28 year old resident of Brooklyn dressed up in a hotdog costume and tied himself to a large fiberglass bee, that was part of a complex of rides being demolished by Thor Development.

This is German's second arrest, having been part of the mass protest last month at the location of the now demolished cyclone rollercoaster and current location of the sunny shore high rise luxury condo development.

German was held for questioning and determined to be an enemy combatant. He will be shipped to Guantanamo Bay Cuba later this week, where he will be tortured outside of the public eye until he confesses to every terrorist act ever commited. He will then face secret military trials and execution as set forth by the patriot act and regulated by our fearless commander, the honorable George W. Bush.

Don't let this happen.

Save Coney Island!

Return to Coney Island

I don't know what it is, but I can't seem to stay away from Coney Island. It holds so much magic and mystery.

Recently, Carrie and I returned to our beloved island to take some more pictures for the album as deadlines loom.

We paid a visit to our good mermaid friend and found a few new mermaids who were kind enough to lets us capture their images on film. Carrie sent me off to look for a pirate because the one I found was not handsome enough while she snapped shots of the horses on the carousel.

We walked out onto the piers and watched the men fishing, the fish flapping madly on the wooden planks begging to be thrown back into the water, gasping their last breaths of very dry air.

We both saw the rocks and the sirens called us towards them. Unfortunately we were greeted by a sign telling us that the rocks were off limits. I decided that this could not be, so I went to the lifeguard stand and spoke to the three lifeguards there asking them very kindly to let me use the rocks. They had no problem, but for some reason told me that I needed to take my clothes off if I wanted to have my picture taken there.

I did remove my tie and button down and sported my wife-beater(please don't be offended by this term used to describe a tank top style undershirt) If you've seen the show cops, then you know the origin of the phrase.

As carrie snapped shots, I noticed a woman sitting in the sand under a black umbrella. I had to have it, if only for a moment. As we took pictures, the lifeguards were yelling that I needed to remove another layer. There was no one swimming so their boredom had turned a bit pervie it seemed.

Carrie went over to ask the woman if we could steel some alone time with her umbrella and to our delight she obliged, though she told us that it was broken. Carrie worked her pixie fingers across the handle and the umbrella was miraculously repaired. She does have magic hands....ooh, John you are a lucky boy. haha :)

All in all, the Sirens of Brooklyn were with us today.

I made my prayers in the water fountain and made amends with an old friend.

Thank you Coney Island for giving us your kisses carried by the salty air.

Image used with the kind permission of photographer,Carrie Thomas

The Coney Island Tragedy

A cold wind blowing through Brooklyn today carried with it the smell of hotdogs.
If you listened hard enough you would also find that it carried the sounds of the craziest wooden rollercoaster ever.
The rollercoaster, in case you don't know, is called 'The Cyclone.'

At first site you wouldn't think it could scare your socks off, let alone your pants. Let me just say that it will take your shirt, your loose change, and quite possibly your soul.

I set out to ride this beast today with the lovely Carrie Thomas in tow. She brought her camera and we were also determined to take some glamour shots down on the pier. Unfortunately her camera battery suddenly went low and she couldn't continue shooting.

We went to two different stores in search of 3 volt batteries. I've never even seen a 3 volt battery, and I'm not quite convinced that they exist. The shopkeepers looked at us bewildered when we enquired about them. They too seemed not to have heard of these special batteries.

We decided to give up and head back to the boardwalk. I looked over at the cyclone to take in a voyeuristic glimpse at the people screaming and flailing. What I saw was quite shocking. Oh my god, quite shocking indeed. The coaster was stuck at the top of the first big climb and they were evacuating people and walking them down the tracks.

Carrie and I ran to get a closer look until we were standing under the great white beast gazing up as one by one the passengers of this doomed coaster ride were carefully taken down the tracks to safety. We are afterall ambulance chasers by nature. Carrie fussed with her camera trying to get a shot. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to get a picture of the woman in the hot pink jump suit that was two sizes too small, uneasily wobbling her way down, gravity and the crowd below just begging for a mis-step.

So, the tragedy at Coney Island is this.

We went to take photos. It didn't happen.
We went to ride the cyclone. It didn't happen.
The biggest tragedy of all is that it was Carrie's first time on the Island of Coney and she didn't get to have a hotdog. Instead she had to settle for a sad piece of pepperoni that the wind whipped into her face, covering her in grease and cheese. The even sadder part is that when I said goodbye to her, I think there was still a bit of sauce on her forehead and I didn't say anything.

Apparently I'm going to burn in hell.

Well, I often display a photo from the lovely Carrie Thomas, but this blog will remain without photo in memory of those who lost their ride on the cyclone.